


running to stand still

by tosca1390



Category: Once Upon a Time (2011)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-25
Updated: 2011-11-25
Packaged: 2017-10-26 13:03:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/283460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/pseuds/tosca1390
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They met in the woods, and to the woods she always returns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	running to stand still

*

They met in the woods, and to the woods she always returns.

Snow White has a grove she likes in particular. The trees grow thickly together near the sky, with just faint trickles of sunlight creeping through the leaves. It is lush and dark green, even in the early days of spring. It reminds her of the old days, ducking between caves and the friendly warmth of the dwarves’ home. These trees, with heavy branches and broad leaves, are the best to hide in.

A princess once again, and she still thinks of the easiest escape routes out of the castle.

She’s found two, so far. She thinks James is sealing them off one by one, but he denies it until he is blue in the face, even when she lays her hands and mouth over his skin.

Snow sits on a mossy stone, fingers rubbing at her leathers. Often she changes into her breeches and leathers and furs, even in the castle. She likes the freedom of movement, the motility of them. Her dresses are lovely and finely-crafted, but it reminds her too strongly of the life she had before the Evil Queen set her sights on her. She has yet to adjust, even a month after the wedding. The courtiers talk under their breath and behind columns, she knows; the council, full of friends new and old, look on her with kind eyes, sure she will find the rhythm of this new life soon.

With the weight of a curse heavy on her marriage bed, and the laces of her dresses too constricting at her waist, she wonders whether soon is soon enough.

“You cannot always run away when we argue.”

She looks down, a smirk curling at her mouth. “I think you know I do what I want.”

“I do,” he says, crouching next to her. He is incognito today, in a loose dark tunic and breeches, but his sword remains belted at his hip and the pendant hangs at his throat.

Her eyes flicker to his face. “Besides, you’ve always found me, Charming,” she says, just to poke at him.

His mouth twists. “I told you –“

“I like Charming better. It fits,” she drawls. “Unlike myself.”

“You fit with me,” he says, his wide warm hands covering hers on her knees. He is a prince kneeling in the dirt before her, and it is still such a strange idea, to think he is hers and she is his.

A flush crawls up her throat. “See? Charming.”

“Would you like to come home and finish this?” he asks archly.

She stands and moves deeper into the grove, grass crumpling under her boots. She leaves him on his knees, something another girl would never think of. But she is no girl. “Sometimes I think this is my real home,” she says, nearly to herself as she presses a hand to the bark of the nearest tree. Moss softens the rough edges of the bark against her palms.

“My home is with you. So, if you are to live here, I will as well.”

“Do you always know the right thing to say?” she asks with a sharp sigh, turning to look at him.

Eyes dark and heavy on her, he rises from his knees and follows the soft path of her feet in the forest floor. “With you, never,” he says, voice low.

“Well, we know that’s not entirely true,” she murmurs, leaning back against the tree trunk.

His hands fit at her waist, his knee pressing between her thighs. “All I said was that I don’t believe we should put our lives on hold because of a bitter woman’s vendetta.”

“And all I’m saying is that she is more than a bitter woman, and we should be afraid,” she bites back.

He leans his mouth towards hers, his nose brushing hers. “Don’t you trust me to protect you?”

“You know it’s not about protection,” she mutters, her hands rising to his chest. Her fingers tangle in his tunic, pulling him close with a sharp tug.

His mouth knocks into hers, his teeth grazing her lip. “If you are with child –“

“Stop,” she hisses, biting at his mouth. “Stop –“ If they don’t say it, if they don’t think it, then it won’t have happened yet, she thinks rather desperately as he kisses her, his mouth open and soft on hers. She doesn’t want softness, not now.

His fingers dig into her waist, searching out the laces of her tunic. “I still remember how this comes off,” he murmurs into her mouth.

“Then you will let your hands talk for you,” she retorts as she bites his lip, her hands sliding under the hem of his tunic to bare muscled skin.

Their fights usually devolve into this, their fingers in the valleys of their bodies and their mouths harsh on the other’s. It’s another layer to their language, how their bodies know what to say; it is why she thinks, even in the most horrible of her nightmares, they might always know each other, even if they were blind and deaf and dumb and without names and memories. Her skin flushes at the touch of his fingertips and she knows how to curve her fingers to his jaw and the broad line of his cheek, to turn his eyes to hers. It is more than just arrangement and protection, and it is more than either of them ever expected from the lives they used to lead.

Her thigh presses against the jut of his hip, laces undone and breeches at their feet and on the ground. “I will say something for dresses. They make encounters like these easier to negotiate,” she half-speaks half-sighs against his mouth as the cool spring air touches her bare skin. She is grateful to have the leather at her back, to ease the press and imprint of the bark on her skin.

He grins, smile white in the dappled light. His fingers curl between her thighs, in the slick warmth echoed in his mouth. She can feel him hard at the inside of her thigh. “I like you in the leathers,” he murmurs as he slides two fingers into her, his thumb a teasing weight at her clit.

The blood floods her cheeks, her back arching. They press chest to chest and breathe together, as his fingers curl and move inside her. “Sometimes I think we should have run away,” she breathes against his mouth, her fingers biting into his shoulders.

He skims his mouth along the line of her jaw as he shakes his head. “I’m not running from anything,” he murmurs, the pad of his thumb fluttering at her clit. Shudders skim through her bones; her fingers twitch into his muscle. “And neither are you. We’re in this together.”

The ring on her finger feels heavier with every breath. She slides her fingers into his short-shorn hair and pulls his mouth back to hers, her nails scraping at his scalp. Her hips roll with every twist of his wrist, every surge of his body against hers. She shuts her eyes against the burning dampness lingering behind there and kisses him as she wants to, all warm heat and teeth at his lips. He envelopes her in the width of his arms and the press of his hips, his cock heavy against her thigh.

“I will make this right,” he says as he enters her, his hand sticky and heavy as it spans her thigh, holding her up against the tree. “Snow, I will make this right.”

She just swallows his words with her mouth and kisses him quiet, ignoring the tears sliding from the corners of her eyes. As she tilts her head back, they slide from her cheek through the tangled lengths of her hair and into the moss behind her. She leaves a part of her in that grove, a memory she hopes never to have to look for.

*

Later, tender-skinned and sick with all-times-of-the-day nausea, she imagines it was that day in the woods that brought them their child.

She tells him this in the thick summer darkness of their airy bedroom, his hands spanning her thighs as his mouth trails wetly along the line of her still-normal stomach. Her fingers scrape at his scalp, the short hair there. His smile is bright and sharp in the darkness, and even though he laughs and shakes his head, she knows he believes.

They have taught each other how to, after all.

*


End file.
